Lena Kowal watched over a network of pulsar clocks from aboard the small ship Silver, alone. She orbited the cold orbit around the asteroid belt, where silence had a metallic taste. She didn't trust mere automatons, so she carried her grandmother's mechanical watch by her spacesuit. The ticking went through the material of her sleeve and mixed with the rhythm of her breathing in her helmet. One artificial night the PSR-17 pulsar deviated by four thousandths of a second, impossibly so. The beat of the pulses arranged themselves into gaps like prime numbers and then into coordinates. Lena's watch slowed by the same amount, though it had no right to lie. - 'Silver, check the network time error,' she said, feeling a tiny shiver under her skin. - Network stable. Unit source of anomaly,' the computer replied, dry as ice, silent. The calculated co-ordinates led beyond the usual routes, to the former periphery of the system's perch of ice. Lena switched on the ion engines and set course, though reason whispered of a return. The darkness welcomed the Silversmith without echo; only the comets turned their white braids slowly, like thoughts. At the very centre of the data indicated, a hollow asteroid waited, entwined with antennae like a sunflower. From within it came a whisper identical to the ticking of a watch, as even as a march. She docked at an oval airlock with no numbers or familiar signs on it. She hooked the rope, pressed the opener and slipped inside on a plume of air. The corridor was as dry as a well; dust had settled in it, forming gentle spirals. Lights switched on in short strips in front of her, responding to the heat of her suit and the movement of her hands. At the end of the corridor, a shield-shaped chamber unfolded, with a pendulum of dark glass. The pendulum moved not by gravity but by magnets, and its rhythm cut the saliva in the throat. In the centre of the dial stood a simple seat, almost a school seat, with its back turned to the entrance. Thin lines glowed between the segments of the dial, arranging themselves into familiar dates and names. As Lena raised her hand with her watch, the hands in the centre sped up and leveled off. An alarm beeped in her headphones, followed by her own voice, years older: "Don't touch the red hand... not yet." The chair creaked and began to turn slowly, as if someone was already sitting on it. Above it, the antennae swung; a metallic clatter went through the hull until her feet buckled. - 'Warning: the gravitational tide is rising,' chuckled Silver, and the bolts in the door slammed shut. A red sector lit up on the dial, like a minute marked with varnish on an old watch. A key with a red pointer slid out from inside the column, trembling in the magnetic field, right at arm's length. The watch on her wrist froze on a single dash, but the dial in front of her began a countdown.